Chapter Two

A Family of Song: Reflections of Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the Mediterranean

Eno Koço

Introduction

Albania presents a fascinating example of a country whose culture has been brushed by successive waves of influence and yet which, like a beach at high water mark, has absorbed and developed these influences in its own way, protected from complete domination by its position at the extreme edge of the waves. This chapter discusses the origins and development of a unique branch of music, the Albanian urban lyric song, which began to appear in the early years of the nineteenth century, had its Golden Age in the 1930s, and is still a part of Albanian musical culture today.

Music has always played an important role in Albanian everyday life, in both the country and the towns. The songs which grew up and flourished in the different regions were passed down orally through the generations and this tradition, to some extent, persists today. The Albanian urban lyric songs represented a great step forward in music making, because they were the first Albanian songs to be written down and so could reach wider audiences than the existing repertoires, which until then had been performed by regional singers for regional audiences.

The research is concerned with a specific repertory within the general field of Albanian popular music. I am concerned, for reasons to be explained, only with the 1930s and the repertory of urban lyric song implied by the title. “Urban” clearly excludes the countryside or mountainous (i.e. rural music). These songs are, in fact, the popular music of the towns. Although in Albania këngë popullore (popular songs) is employed as a general and common term, I have preferred not to use “popular”, because in the 1990s the word implies a cultural context more American, or modern, than the songs in question, which are also, after all, part of the folk songs of Albania. In Albania the term popullore (popular), which is closer to the Italian popolare or the Russian narodnaya, is used in a somewhat wider sense to embrace the music that, with the growth of the towns, began to develop distinctive characteristics which tended to be accepted by most Albanians. The repertories covered by popullore songs embrace not only urban songs, but also gypsy songs and sometimes elaborated folk music. If the oral folk music traditions are, more or less, restricted to their immediate areas, the popullore songs or music have, as was stated above, a wider range. By concentrating on “lyric” I hope to isolate a particular aspect of the performing and oral history of the repertory, by which it was developed into something akin to the art song. Because this type of song falls somewhere between the

repertories normally studied (which incline to art-music or to allegedly “purer” forms of folk music), this is an area which has not previously received much attention.

A look at Albanian music in the first half of the twentieth century was required, to trace both its roots and the conditions which led to the emergence of urban lyric song. A considerable number of recordings made by three lyric sopranos (one was my mother), a tenor and two baritones (one was my father), as well as recordings by other post-war lyric singers, demonstrate that its first impact on Albanian music was felt during the 1930s and the 1940s. Those early urban songs were inspired by the local environment and everyday events; they were beautifully shaped and rich in emotional expression.

My views differ quite markedly from some previously theories. Doris and Erich Stockman felt that, before the second half of the 20th century, “the entire musical life of Albania was determined by folk music.”i However, urban lyric songs show that, while the musical life of Albania may have been heavily influenced by folk music during the first half of the 20th century, by 1930 that influence was no longer strong enough to dominate it entirely.

The development of the urban lyric song, the period covered by this article, was most directly linked to historical events after the independence of Albania in 1912. It should be emphasized that the Albanian resistance and national unification movement before Albania’s independence was directed almost entirely from abroad, mainly by the Albanian Diaspora in Romania, Italy, Greece and Egypt. I come from a family of grandparents and parents who lived in Albanian Diaspora; from my father’s side in Romania and from mother’s, in Egypt. Tefta Tashko-Koço, my mother, who was born in Fayum in Egypt, and returned to Albania with her family in 1921 when she was 11 years old, recorded several Albanian urban lyric songs for the Columbia Society in Italy in 1937 and 1942. My father, Kristo Koço, a baritone, came to Albania from Bucharest for the first time in 1938 and was also a member of the group of lyric singers, but was not as active as his wife.

Being orphaned at an early age, I found conversation and discussion with my mother’s and father’s friends and colleagues a sort of substitute for them. In many cases I have kept notes, for more than thirty years, of these artists’ recordings. I knew all the singers and pianists of the 1930s personally, and also had contacts with some of the composer–arrangers and poets who lived after the Second World War. I have, therefore, been able to investigate the historical and musical background of Albanian song with personal knowledge of those involved. During my time as conductor of the Albanian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra (1976-1991) I recorded many urban lyric songs, with both art and amateur singers, the latter being accompanied by a small orchestra, and I also arranged some of them for both lyric and traditional singers.

Albanian Music Studies

Although the traditional urban song is the most prominent of Albanian musical genres, it has not been studied in depth until now. Traditional urban songs and urban lyric songs since the 1930s are classified into two separate categories: the first is sung by traditional

(untrained) and amateur singers, the second by the art singers. The Albanian urban lyric songs, being on the borderline between the urban traditional song and the lyric song with a strongly recognizable modal flavor, differs in many ways from the rural or mountain song (it is worth recalling that in the 1930s, over 60% of the Albanian population lived in rural areas). The core of this study deals with Albanian urban lyric songs (AULS) in the 1930s, as “artistic” versions of traditional urban songs. My main source of information for interpretation of these songs was existing recordings made by art singers of the 1930s, to which I had extensive access.

Whatever the origin of the Albanian urban lyric song, whether Middle Eastern or south-western Balkan, the composer–arrangers of the 1930s and the lyric singers conceived them as west European Mediterranean vocal and instrumental products.

In 1940, Pjetër Dungu compiled a book called Lyra Shqiptare (The Albanian Lyre),ii

published in Italy by the Instituto Geografico De Agostini, Novara. The compilation of the songs was devised by Dungu, but all the songs were also translated into Italian. iii The Lyra Shqiptare contains fifty of the most typical urban lyric songs, with their melodies and texts, and it is illustrated with numerous drawings depicting Albanian symbolism. This collection of songs, mainly from Shkodra and Korça and, to a lesser degree from Kosova, Elbasan, Berat, and so on, not only served as a table of reference for the AULS, but was also used as a basis for the later elaboration of this genre.

In 1943, Gjon Kolë Kujxhija published in Florence Dasëm Shkodrane (A Shkodra Wedding), the first volume of the Valle Kombëtare (National Dances), a wonderful compilation of wedding songs from the northern Albanian town of Shkodra.iv Youri Arbatsky published the treatise Beating the Tupan in the Central Balkans, a study of the music of the tupan (big drum) as played in eastern Albania, through Macedonia, to western Bulgaria in 1953.v Arbatsky also discusses the influence of the gypsy peoples in the Balkans, Turkish and Arabic influence, the meter and folk musicians.

In the mid-thirties, Kosta Manojlovič, a Slav monk, musicologist and folklorist, harmonized and arranged for mixed choirs and solo voices some Albanian urban songs (AUS). The elements of harmony and counterpoint used in his songs were treated in a skilful way and were used for the later orchestrations of the same urban songs. In the post-war period research into Albanian folk music was also undertaken by musicologists from other countries, such as Doris and Erich Stockmann, A. L. Lloyd and others.vi

Jane Sugarman is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in the music of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. She has conducted field research in Albania and the former Yugoslavia, as well as among immigrants in Western Europe and North America, with a focus on the participation of musical forms in processes of identity formation. Her 1997 book, Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings, analyzes the relationship between singing and gender relations in a diasporic Albanian community. I must admit that in the above mentioned book I have different views from Sugarman when she tries to associate the music and singing of the Prespiansvii with their Muslim religion.viii

Among the Albanian contemporary ethnomusicologists Ramadan Sokoli is the most eminent to whom scholars of Balkan music should be particularly indebted for his study of Ottoman modes and practices. The Albanian Musical Folklore (in two volumes), a

valuable book written by Sokol Shupo, and another of the same kind (in four parts) written by Vasil Tole, have substantially enriched our knowledge of Albanian folk and urban music.

Modal entities

Makam system and practice was a particularly important strand of the Ottoman heritage for the development of northern Albanian urban lyric song. Sokoli defines makams as “modal scales which came from the Turkish-Arabic-Persian culture which the Ottoman invasion had spread by way of folklore both to Albania and other regions of the Balkans. Each of these scales is distinguished by its structure, “ethos” and such other features of its softness and sweetness on the one hand, and its passion turning to deepest sorrow on the other.”ix In the mid-eighteenth century this was the music of the upper classes and is thought to have been played initially in the outer courtyards of the Albanian pashallik-s (Turkish: pa¦alık),x those of Bushati in the north with its capital at Shkodra, and of Ali Pasha Tepelena in the south, with its capital at Janina,xi and performed at private and religious gatherings by well-known professional musicians.

Not all Ottoman makams were used with the same frequency in Albania; some of them were more adaptable to the Albanian ethos and some less. The urban songs of jare style from Shkodra present the closest parallels to the most significant makams that were originally introduced into Albania. By the end of the nineteenth century, the makam’s role in Albanian urban song was progressively modified. Gradually, not only because of the remoteness from the capital of the Ottoman Empire but also through the tendency of Albanian composers to purge their songs of Middle Eastern “excesses”, urban songs became less dependent on the highly distinctive features of the original Ottoman makams. The nomenclature changed, also, and these modal systems began to be referred to by the Persian word perde.

With the Islamization of the villages, which came rather later than in the towns,xii an interaction of musical features evolved and a greater ethnic and cultural diversity was permitted. The urban song of Middle Eastern modal inclination not only adopted many elements of Ottoman modal scales but also borrowed elements from the local traditional urban and rural song. This simultaneous existence of a typically urban traditional and rural music and the new urban professional songs of the same area created a unique type of Albanian urban song which had a distinctly recognizable regional character. The rural song was inclined to borrow, chiefly in north and central Albania, elements and features of an Middle Eastern musical system already used in the towns, probably because the Turkish monophonic tunes could be absorbed more easily into the monophonic traditional or folk urban and rural (mountain) tunes of the northern part of Albania. For this reason, Turkish monophonic music found it more difficult to influence the folk music of south Albania, because of the predominance of multi-part folk music in that region and secondly because of its affinity with some Greek modalities. However, some of the latter borrowed Middle Eastern elements and characteristics.

As the Ottoman Empire encroached from the north, Byzantine secular musical traditions found sanctuary in rural music. It is as if a “cultural time capsule” was carried away by Albanians who, under Ottoman pressure, left their homeland for Sicily and southern Italy in large numbers during the fifteenth century. By 1921 there were still about 80,000 Albanian speakers in these regions. Here they retained their language and, under papal license, the right to practice the orthodox rites, guarding their inheritance jealously. It is arguable that their songs embody music that existed in southern Albania before Ottoman influence.

In southern Albania the archaic musical tradition is predominantly pentatonic (see song notation, Example 4). Often expressed collectively in polyphonic choral singing with or without a drone, this tradition was able to embrace influence from the Byzantine mainly secular music occupied in the Eastern Empire. The south-western Balkan notion of mode, which includes mainly pentatonic and diatonic modes, is closer, in my view, to the notion of an echos. A certain “flavor” is imparted to music of Byzantine origin by the fact that it is built up on the same modal scheme or “echoi,” which are not so much distinctive scales as groups of melodies of a certain type and distinguish as a recognizably south-western Balkan mode entity.xiii To the north, on the other hand, the local tradition was more homophonic.

Although I referred in the analysis to Ottoman modes and their influence in Albania, this does not mean that these modes preserved in Albania the same “ethos” and structure, the same intervals and names as the original Ottoman forms. However, if the surface of some urban songs is scratched, their modalities may lead to “Ottoman layers”; that is why it is important, in my view, to refer to the present theory of the Ottoman Turkish modes (as classified by Signell), and to classify some of the urban songs according to the makam system. Although the “Ottoman layers” were absorbed into the local idiom, i.e. to the urban and folk culture of the Albanian people, still it is not hard to distinguish, even in a song composed in the 1930s, 1940s or later, the mode which used to be present as an Ottoman variant.

Instruments and Instrumental Ensembles

It is important to stress that in all parts of Albania where the urban song was cultivated, instrumental urban music was also practised. The instrumental ensembles in urban areas had their distinctive features, which varied from north to south Albania. Amongst the different types of urban songs, those of aheng played a significant role. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the aheng ensemble of north Albania consisted, roughly, of a sazexiv (long-necked lute, with up to ten strings), a fiddle, a percussive instrument like a dajre or defxv and a singer; other instruments were added on different occasions, such as the kavall and çapare, a kind of Turkish zil (cymbals).

The bejtexhi-sxvi and even dancers were also part of the aheng ensembles. As time passed, the clarinet was included in the aheng groups and, in addition, the violin and def, which were also included in the southern ensembles. According to Sokoli, around 1905, the instrumental ensembles of Elbasan, in central Albania, consisted of the following:

violin, çyr,xvii llauta, clarinet, dajre and one or two other instruments. In Berat, around 1915, according to veteran-musicians, the aheng ensemble of Riza Nebati consisted of a violin (Nebati himself), clarinet, llauta and def, whilst another aheng group (the Qamili brothers) which moved from Përmet to Berat about the same period, consisted of a violin, gërrneta (clarinet), llauta and mandoll. The combination of these instruments in specific urban ensembles was an attempt to create the needed balance either for the aheng group solos or for the accompaniment to songs.

Urban instrumental ensembles were particularly common in the most developed mercantile regions and towns of Albania, such as Shkodra. By the end of the nineteenth i . Doris Stockmann and Erich Stockmann, “Albania,” in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove

Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2, Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1980.ii. Pjetër Dungu, Lyra Shqiptare (Albanian Lyre), notated songs, “Këngë popullore të mbledhura nën kujdesin e Radio-Tiranas” (Albanian [urban] songs, assembled under the care of Radio Tirana) Canti popolari albanesi, Instituto Geografico De Agostini-Novara, Stampato in Italia, 1940, 18.iii. The Italian administrative intervention in Albania which had begun gradually in the mid-1930s ended in colonization in 1939.

iv ?. Gjon Kolë Kujxhia, “Valle Kombëtare, Cori Nazionali Albanesi (National Dances)―Dasëm Shkodrane, Nozze Scutarina (Shkodra Wedding),” vol. 1, Florence, Tipografia “Il Cenacolo” di Bruno Ortolani, 1943.v. Yury Arbatsky, Beating the Tupan in the Central Balkans (Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1953).vi. A. L. Lloyd, “Albanian Folk Song”, Folk Music Journal 1, (1968): 205–222.vii. The Prespa people are an Albanian-speaking minority living in the districts around Lake Prespa, in the north-east of Slav Macedonia.viii. The fact that the latter are Muslims has little to do with their music and singing; the musical styles of this region, where three or more different nations are encountered, are specific and innately shared with the Christian Orthodox Albanians and their Slavic and Greek neighbors. During the Ottoman suzerainty when the Prespa community gradually changed its former religion to Islam, its music remained the same as it was in the pre-Ottoman period (allowing for the natural process of transformation) and did not adopt any Ottoman styles. Leaving aside religious and regional identity, it is more important to emphasize that the communities of the south-west Balkans, which include Prespa, to this day still cultivate their local and regional, mainly pentatonic, drone-based polyphonic singing; this is indigenous and far older than the Ottoman practices introduced into Albania with the arrival of the Turks in the Balkans.ix. R. Sokoli, Folklori Muzikor Shqiptar (Morfologjia) (The Albanian Musical Folklore) (Tirana: 1965), 25.x. Area governed by a pashaxi. Bushati Dynasty of Shkodra, north Albania (1750–1831) and Ali, Pasha of Tepelena, Epirus (1803–1821).xii. “This occurred principally during the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, that is to say, when the Turks first subjugated the land, and when subject peoples who were Moslems became generally eligible for official employment”. J. Swire, Albania, the Rise of a Kingdom (London: Williams & Norgate Ltd, 1929), 32.xiii. The term south-western Balkan mode is my own and I hope it will not be regarded as an arbitrary coinage.xiv. Foreign traditional instrument names, in spite of their origins, Turkish, Persian and Greek, are given in Albanian, e.g., saze and not saz, peshref and not pe¦rev.

century and the beginning of the twentieth, the merchants of this town, mainly Christians, made efforts to improve their quality of life by trading with foreign countries such as Austria and Italy. The more elaborate of the imported manufactured instruments, such as the violin and clarinet, were to be found among the merchant class, simply because they could afford them. Towards evening, the townsmen of Shkodra would gather at cafés, locandas for Christians and khans for Muslims, and on special occasions they enjoyed their native music played and sung by local urban performers. The urban instrumental ensembles were limited in number and they functioned mainly for special ceremonies such as weddings; the members of these groups, the ahengxhi, did not enjoy any particular social status and the people who played the instruments or sang in these groups were, generally, looked upon with a sort of contempt. Despite this attitude, these professional or semi-professional popular musicians have played an enormous role in the preservation of popular musical events such as weddings and parties, dances and even live concerts. They were the real carriers of the tradition of urban instrumental and vocal music, in that they followed certain rules which were important for regulating the order of the songs, and the order of the events in the aheng parties in general.

Although the aheng practice followed more or less the same rules and performed the same function throughout Albania, local customs and regulations were quite distinct. In Berat, for instance, the instrumental and vocal pot-pourris in the aheng style, used as introductions to wedding parties, were mainly improvised by the local aheng players, but some elements were also borrowed from other aheng areas. The aheng ensembles of Shkodra, Durrës, Elbasan, Tirana and Berat, all followed Middle Eastern intonations and practices, albeit adapted into local versions, but this was the only point of contact and interchange of the traditional urban music between these towns. This enabled the aheng ensembles to meet the demands of ordinary people all over the Albanian world, at weddings and other festivities, and gave them an advantage over rural music, which could not arouse interest beyond its immediate area. The growth of the aheng ensembles in the early years of the twentieth century in a country where three quarters of the population lived in rural areas, made it possible for urban music to reach a much wider audience and for the aheng practice to be introduced into the villages. As they were obliged to participate in some of the rural musical rituals, for example at weddings, the aheng players also included in their repertories the rudimentary traditional music which had been strongly preserved in the rural and mountainous areas as part of the musical identity of the region.

Nationalism

xv. tambourine; one of the principal membranophone percussion instruments to be found in both southern and northern urban ensembles.xvi. Bards or anecdotists, who in the aheng parties improvise a range of humorous conventional verses; each line is usually composed of 7, 8 or more syllables.xvii. A lute-type instrument with a long neck and a pear-shaped body; its (ten?) strings were plucked with plectrum. This instrument is not now in use.

It is obvious that Ottoman influence was reflected in different social aspects of Albanian life and consequently in many urban songs. But the process of the “Albanisation” of the songs had started, at the latest, with Kasem Xhurri (born in Shkodër, in the 1830s) “who, after returning to his country, was dedicated to improving the Shkodran aheng, particularly by introducing Byzantine melodies similar to Shkodrane dances and fitting them to the sixth key of Byzantine music.”xviii The newer generations after Muço, Xhurri and Kurti, deliberately attempted to purge the urban songs of “external” elements and to give them a marked local character. Thus, in spite of the Ottoman legacy or Greek affiliation, the entire process of transforming the urban song into an Albanian entity and identity is clearly seen in the way the Middle Eastern modes and sometimes melodies were adapted to the Albanian ethos.

The Albanian urban songs fall into three main groups differentiated by mode of transmission:

1. Those of largely unknown authorship, which have been subjected to changes over time in the course of oral tradition;

2. Songs existing in unwritten form, which have been elaborated and transformed into urban lyric songs through notation by composer arrangers;

3. Those which are entirely the work of art composers. The first type of urban song came from ahengxix music and only rarely existed in notated form in the first half of the 20th century.

Palokë Kurti was the first Albanian composer to write down songs, most of them based on sharki-s (Turkish: ¦arki)xx and peshref-s (Turkish: pe¦rev).xxi In fact, before and during his time the aheng urban music of his native Shkodra, which was an unwritten music, was heavily under the influence of Turkish music. The urban songs composed by Kurti are clear illustrations of, on the one hand, his association with the aheng songs and, on the other, of his strong individuality as a composer aspiring to create a new type of song. Because of the enormous popularity of Kurti’s songs they were re-adopted by the aheng ensembles, but of course in a more refined form than that of the instrumental tunes which had inspired them.

The second type of urban song, elaborated and transformed into lyric song by means of notated accompaniment, emerged in the 1930s and has been seriously developed since then. Albanian composer-arrangers such as Gjoka, Dungu, Kongoli, Kono and others collected urban tunes and songs from the traditional singers, provided piano or orchestral arrangements, and performed them in collaboration with art singers.

In the third type, composers wrote completely new songs. However, these were not claimed as a new and original genre. Rather, the artist-composers were at pains to promote the songs as part of the conventional tradition of the (anonymous) urban, popular

xviii. Kolë Gurashi and Gjush Sheldija, “Ahengu Shkodran” (The Shkodran Aheng, Shkodra Yearbook 1961), 213.xix. In Alb. it is an instrumental ensemble or the music played in the aheng ensembles.xx. Urban art songs.xxi. A type of instrumental prelude.

song. Through perpetual oral modification and alteration, the original versions of Kurti’s songs have almost been lost, but this does not obscure their authorship. They still play a dual role: (1) as urban traditional music, because as is widely recognised, it “has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community”;xxii (2) as popular music, because it was originally taken from aheng music, and the consciously devised elements have remained unchanged.

In Elbasan, in central Albania, the oral tradition of urban song was transmitted in a different way than that of Kurti. Situated just north of the river Shkumbini, the population of Elbasan belongs to the northern Geg ethnic and linguistic groupxxiii. The urban songs of this region are also affected by its geographical position, and their expression tends to show the melodic freedom which is characteristic of, for instance, the urban songs of Shkodra. The urban songs of the Korça district, in southern Albania, have a character all of their own, their origin is still somewhat mysterious. It is assumed that some of these elegant songs probably came from Janina in Epirus. They represent the heart of that modal idiom which I have called the south-western Balkan mode.

Love Songs

Love songs are the predominant category of urban songs, regionally distinctive and fiercely guarded by the local people. In the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, a composer could not openly dedicate a song to the woman who had inspired it because, in the unenlightened moral climate, a woman’s beauty was a taboo subject. However, the love songs became a part of cultural life, and the focus of nationalistic feeling, ironically by allowing the people to “forget” the political situation in the pleasure of listening to Albanian urban song as it began its transformation into art-song.

The texts of the majority of urban songs are love poems. Their principal theme is the disappointment of love which often resulted from the rigidity of Albanian society. Women did not appear in public either as creators or as singers but sang mainly indoors; hence the allusions to “the partridge in the cage” and “the poor nightingale.” Men, however, could sing at general gatherings, in the traditional coffee houses or, even more importantly, at urban festivities, among which the dasma (wedding) was the most significant. The male composer-singers generally sang in falsetto, a range later adopted by trained female sopranos. Usually the composer-singer also wrote the verses (cf bejtexhi-sxxiv).

However, in the Central and North Albanian love songs of the aheng type, the Middle Eastern influence is obvious. It should be stressed that during the Communist regime in Albania many texts were reworked. The aim was to avoid any versification

xxii. The document of the Sao Paulo Folk Music Council Congress, JIFMC, ii, 1955, p.23xxiii. Geg, the northern ethnic group of Albania (Gegëria).xxiv. bejtexhi, Albanian word of Turkish extraction, meaning, urban singer, bard.

which did not fit the new socialist ideas, a tendency which was not directed towards refinement or recreation, but was made purely for ideological reasons.

The styles of singing of the AULS in the 1930s

Before the stylized forms of urban music began to emerge around the 1930s, the majority of the Albanian people had enjoyed only folk, traditional urban or popular music, for voice or instruments. Even those living in the towns could not easily digest the so-called urban lyric songs. An effort was required from the artistes to fulfil this genuine public demand. Something was needed to draw a larger audience to the concert halls. The answer might be the inclusion of Albanian songs; at least, in that case, a larger proportion of the audience would understand the words. One could also hear accomplished songs with a fine shape and structure, such as “May God Save Your Beauty” (Marshalla bukuris s’ate), Example 1, “Looking from the Window” (Dola në penxhere), Example 2, “Nightingale, You Poor Nightingale” (Bilbil o i mjeri bilbil), Example 3, and “O What Are You Asking For, You Poor Old Man” (O po ç’kërkon o i mjeri plak), Example 4.

The interpretation of the lyric singers of the 1930s, which is the strongest factor that made the urban traditional song sound like an urban lyric (art) song, was the key-point in the conception and establishment of these songs as cultivated vocal products. There are many details of phrasing and technique common to both art songs and urban lyric songs; these may be seen, for instance, in the way Pavarotti sings a Neapolitan song, and in the use made of the same principles by an Albanian art singer in an Albanian lyric song. The preferred vocal tone of most Albanian urban lyric songs requires smooth and refined voice-production. As was noted earlier, traditional urban songs were not written down. The essential features that made them recognizable as regional or as typical of individual traditional singers’ styles had to be learnt by the art singers of the 1930s and incorporated into their individual musical styles with care and accuracy. As an art performance, it was the interpreter’s presentation which came to be regarded as the work itself. It is possible to identify three marked interpretative approaches which might be described as traditionalist, operatic and melodramatic respectively.

NOTATION EXAMPLES

What Are You Asking For, You Poor Old man (O po ç’kërkon o i mjeri plak)May God Save Your Beauty (Marshalla bukuris s’ate)Looking from the Window (Dola n’penxhere)Nightingale, You Poor Nightingale (Bilbil o i mjeri bilbil)

The traditionalist approach

It is purely by coincidence that the interpretation of the Albanian urban lyric song (AULS) is represented by just one singer from the north of Albania, Marie Kraja, but by five from the south, Antoniu, Truja, Tashko-Koço, Ciko, and Kristo Koço. Significantly,

only Kraja was inclined to the traditionalist approach, using embellishment and modal elements of both traditional and art music. These elements, as well as her natural vocal timbre and a style of delivery adorned with a “mosaic of tones” (as her voice was described by contemporary music critics), are the essential ways in which she differed from her colleagues of the south. Dozens of trained singers of younger generations followed Kraja’s route.

The essence of this style was the imitation of the unsophisticated urban folk singers’ delivery; broken words, for instance, were a typical feature of the Albanian urban songs. This manner of expression was remarkably well assimilated by regional singers and was transmitted as their own creation, producing an emphatic and passionate communication with the listener. Kraja is said to have shown a great interest in the instruments that made up the ensemble which accompanied the urban song and particularly in the violin. Since the embellishments used by this instrument are associated with those of the soprano voice (the vibrato, trill etc.), Kraja observed that the violin’s (qemane’s) importance in the ensemble lay not merely in leading the melody or the whole instrumental group, but also in the expressiveness of its playing and its ability to imitate the human voice. Conversely, the violin itself was a point of reference or a model to imitate for the art singers, because of its traditional patterns of playing.

The operatic approach

Other singers, such as Tashko-Koço and Antoniu, were also inclined to make the song sound Albanian and, to a certain degree, local. However, they also aimed to bring out the flavor of the song as a whole, according to the structural principles of art song. The essence of musical expression for them was the cantabile utterance. “Thus it is the musical line, above all, that the singer must serve and respect. There can be no question of sacrificing it for the benefit of the words.”xxv Judging by the recordings of Albanian urban lyric songs (AULS) made in Italy before and during World War Two, my mother, Tefta Tashko-Koço, can be said to have been an exponent of the operatic approach. In her interpretation it was the continuity of the vocal line which was of particular importance. The traditional breaks in words or breaths taken mid-phrase or emphatic gaps were treated according to the demands of art singing, and the literary text was sometimes sacrificed to the demands of the length of the vocal line. The operatic approach has often been viewed, by traditionalists, as a deviation from the urban composer’s intentions. However, in the opinion of the art singers, the true beauty and value of the singing lies in a blend of traditional urban interpretation and trained vocal performance by trained singers.

The melodramatic approach

Kristaq Antoniu is a fine example of this style. The essence of his approach consists in creating an atmosphere and suggesting a drama. The articulation of the poetic text and the contrasting impressions of the narrative modulate from one musical mood to another, xxv. Pierre Bernac, The Interpretation of French Song, London: Victor Gollancz, 1976.

from a recitative to a bel-canto line. The song thus represents, on the one hand, the quality of legato singing and, on the other, the preservation of modulations and stresses in the sung text, with rhythmic subtleties that are found in a good spoken monologue. Antoniu, being an experienced film actor, created his own patterns of declamatory singing, his own verbal melody, his own prototypes of ad lib. introductions to the songs and his own lineament of sound and rhythm, revealing his sensitivity to the music and words.

Of course, there are no absolute distinctions between these three approaches, particularly between the last two, and some overlap is inevitable. What counted in the end, was not just the Albanian art singer’s own conception of the song, but, above all, his musicianship and personal interpretation.

Concerts and Recordings

Although the concerts of the early 1930 consisted almost entirely of carefully chosen classical pieces, three or four years later the AULS were receiving almost the same critical attention. Looking at some concert-programs of those years, one might be surprised at the diversity of the repertoire and the careful combination of vocal and instrumental pieces.

The climax was reached on the 1st of March 1939 (only a month before the Italian military intervention in Albania), when Paluca (Kraja) and Aleksi (Gjoka) gave a concert consisting entirely of AULS. The singers of the later 1930s tried to combine AULS in their programs in different ways; either to intersperse them between classical pieces in different parts of the program, or to put them in a special section of their own. In the early 1940s, when the “veteran” group of artistes was increased by new members, more complex programs were given, some of them in combination with Italian singers and instrumentalists, accompanied by the piano or orchestra.

The climax in the development of Albanian urban lyric song may be considered to have occurred in 1937, with the tour by Albanian artistes to Italy. They were immediately offered for recording in Italy. The recording companies played an important role in the dissemination of AULS. In spite of the poor technical quality of the 78 rpm recordings of the 1930s and 1940s which is typical of that period, and of some tape recordings which were made in the 1940s and 1950s, the songs are a priceless document of the singers’ interpretations. It should however be pointed out that all these recordings were made in haste and not always when the singers’ voices were at their best.

The first recordings of urban lyric songs were actually made in the 1930s. In 1937 and 1942 Tefta Tashko-Koço recorded for Columbia in Italy forty-five AULS with orchestral accompaniment, as well as Italian and French classical arias. Three Italian conductors, Segurini, Rizza and Consiglio, were involved in her recordings. Her husband, Kristo Koço, recorded two urban songs. Twelve songs are now missing from the set. In 1942 Antoniu recorded for Columbia sixteen AULS. Dungu, arranged, orchestrated, accompanied on the piano and conducted the orchestra in Antoniu’s set of recordings. In 1942, The recordings made by Mihal Ciko belong to the period 1942-1944, but his main

singing career belonged to the 1930s. His piano accompanists were the Italian Mario Ettore and the Albanians Guraziu and Gjoka. Truja’s recordings of the urban songs (probably five in all) extended over a longer period of time and were accompanied by piano, always with the same accompanist, the devoted Gjoka. A valuable set of about 300 urban lyric songs was recorded by Kraja in Albania. The majority of these songs are accompanied by piano, chiefly by Lola Gjoka, but others are accompanied by an orkestrina (instrumental ensemble), or even a symphony orchestra. Other performers of AULS, in the early 1940s, at the start of their careers or still studying, attracted favorable critical notices in the local newspapers. Unfortunately some of them never received their due acclaim after the war because of the new political climate in Albania.

These recordings today have a special historical value. In spite of the Italian official political ambitions on Albania, the presence of Italian musicians and impresarios there was a considerable stimulus to Albanian art musicians. The Fiera del Levante of 1937 with the participation of Albanian art singers and pianists was a platform for displaying the virtues of Albanian urban lyric songs. In these manifestations nearly all trained artists took part, exquisitely dressed in resplendent folk costumes, and proved that this new stylized type of song was now fully fledged. It was one of the rare occasions on which Albanian artists had crossed the borders as a group to demonstrate their individual and collective talents in the field of urban song. The Italian critics realized what a significant moment this was in the history of Albanian culture.

Conclusions

Although my parents died when I was still in my teens, I was brought up with their voices, their songs, and their portraits, which were transfigured in my imagination as purely musical pictures and voice images. When I started to study music, then graduated and worked in a musical professional field, the abstract images of my childhood stimulated me to a larger study of the lyric song phenomenon of the 1930s. This occurrence consisted in the fact that by the 1930s, all members of the group of lyric singers were on Albanian soil after a long period of living abroad. A group of gifted people happened to come together at the right time and in the right place, and their combined ability to turn the urban song into a glittering concert piece had a marked and lasting impact on Albanian musical culture.

From the beginning, the first recordings of urban lyric songs clearly portended the emergence of a new chapter in the history of Albanian music. Soon after the 1930s the urban lyric song became a very much-loved genre for composers, interpreters, instrumentalists and audiences. It is surprising that although more than sixty years have passed since the first recordings of these songs were released, they still remain models that can be followed, but not matched, for their variety and breadth of interpretation.

Arbatsky was one of the first authors I have encountered to have written on Albanian traditional music. I remember his account that “Albanian traditional music survives on its own.”xxvi Despite of the chronic political, social and geographical isolation from which Albania has suffered during its recent history, has not particularly affected the xxvi. Arbatsky, Yury. Beating the Tupan . . . op. cit

development of the urban song. Not only did the Albanian urban song (AUS), seen as a wholesome and necessary diversion for the urban people, continue to be performed throughout Albania after the 1930s, but the Albanian urban lyric song (AULS), which was first introduced in the 1930s, also went on developing in the post–World War II period on a professional level, and new arrangements continued to appear. As these reflections of Albanian Urban Lyric Song in the Mediterranean, a very much part of my family song, focus mainly on the 1930s (the period when this song was born), there is no

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scope for covering the many developments of more recent years, although these are deserving of scholarly attention.

Notes